


Home

by josephina_x



Series: Dimension 46'\-E [4]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Crossover, Gen, Post-Series, Post-Weirdmageddon, Zero Gravity AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 10:26:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13074933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: Ford brings the Cipher Twins back to the Shack, then has a short but slightly disquieting discussion with Stanley.





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> Fic: Home  
> Fandom: Gravity Falls  
> Pairing: n/a  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Spoilers: through the end of the series, and some of the books (Journal #3)  
> Summary: Ford brings the Cipher Twins back to the Shack, then has a short but slightly disquieting discussion with Stanley.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit.  
> AN: Yet more Zero Gravity AU meets Gravity Falls madness.
> 
> Information on tanosan96’s Zero Gravity AU can be found [here](http://tanosan96.tumblr.com/post/147541258187/zero-gravity-au-full-characters-design-and-plot) and [here](http://tanosan96.tumblr.com/post/149841490722/zero-gravity-au-official-story-contents)!

\---

By the time Ford, Bill, and Will had made it back to the Shack at Will’s most comfortable walking speed, a good number of Bill’s questions about his adventures elsewhere had been answered along the way, the Zodiac circle had been cleaned up from the ground -- with the water hose, from the look of the wet grass -- and most everyone had gone back home.

“Ford,” Stanley greeted him from the front porch that doubled as the Mystery Shack’s entrance, as he finished messing with the ‘closed’ sign, presumably for Soos. “How’d it go?”

“About as well as could be expected, under the circumstances,” Ford told his brother, as the Cipher twins hung back a bit. “I gathered some additional data from surveying the clearing more carefully, and Bill here was able to capture two of the cultists from earlier. We’ve gotten all that we can out of them, which sadly wasn’t much,” he told his brother. “We should probably call the sheriff and his partner to come pick them up from the woods,” he glanced back at Bill and smirked, “before the bears get them,” he said only somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

“...Or anything else,” Stan said, looking at him a bit askance, and Ford was reminded yet again that his brother knew full well what sort of potentially-dangerous creatures lurked in the woods around them.

“Ah, yes,” Ford admitted almost sheepishly.

“Serve ‘em right if they did,” Bill piped up, though Will scolded him shortly thereafter.

“Would you two like to come inside?” Ford asked them. Will and Bill exchanged glances, Bill shrugged, and they both nodded at him, so Ford waved them inside. “Their situation is a bit more complicated than we’d thought at first,” he told Stanley, as the twins headed in past them.

“If they got caught up on the wrong side of the cultists, I’m not surprised,” Stanley said, eyeing them. “--Straight ahead, through the ‘employees only’ door,” he told the two teenagers as they walked in the entrance of the gift shop.

Ford realized, after the Ciphers were inside and out of earshot, that Stanley looked uncomfortable in some way. He kept eyeing him oddly.

“Stanley, is something wrong?” he asked his brother directly.

Stan shrugged.

“Stanley,” Ford scolded. “Just tell me.”

“It’s not...” He stopped. “You look…” Stan trailed off again.

“I look what, Stanley?”

Stan frowned slightly, as though he almost didn’t want to say.

“Relaxed,” he said finally. “You look relaxed.”

Ford blinked as he took stock of his current physical and mental state, and realized that his brother was right. He _did_ feel relaxed, in a way he hadn’t felt in a good long time.

And then he realized why that must be.

“They’re… interdimensional travelers, too,” Ford told him, ‘ _just like me_ ,’ he thought. Neither of them had meant to end up in another dimension, and the odds of them getting home were… well, about as slim as Ford had thought his chances were at the time that he’d been accidentally pushed through the portal himself, most likely.

They didn’t seem out of place though; rather, the teens already seemed to have that sort of ‘roll with the punches’ attitude that interdimensional travelers picked up very quickly, within only one or two jumps, in order to survive.

Whenever Ford had met an interdimensional traveler of a similar mindset, they’d clicked. He’d been on several joint ventures, and adventures, with fellow travellers before, until their paths had by necessity diverged, as their own personal goals had. But it had been comfortable, almost welcome, whenever and wherever he’d found them, joining together to face all the infinite universes with that weird but pleasant sort of lost-souls camaraderie. Ford had never seen or felt anything like it anywhere else, not since returning to his own dimension and staying here.

‘ _I even had a small joint venture with them, too_ ,’ Ford realized, and then almost chuckled as he realized that that ‘small joint venture’ had been an impromptu partnership in successfully terrorizing and interrogating a pair of captured prisoners that the twins almost hadn’t wanted to share. But, just as always, he and his fellow interdimensional travelers had banded together seamlessly to get the job done, without even needing to exchange a handful of words on the subject, without even knowing that they were fellow travellers at first.

...Except it occurred to Ford in retrospect that there was a major dividing line this time that he may have just crossed. Ford wasn’t in another dimension right now; he was home. And those prisoners hadn’t been part of some band of space pirates, or an army out for the bounty Bill had put on his head, or even a wealthy private merchant who had parts for his quantum destabilizer that they refused to sell him. These two men had just been two rather deeply misguided individuals who were likely citizens of the surrounding county in which he lived. And the ‘job’ he’d just done… He’d just spent the last twenty minutes laughing and smiling as he’d done his absolute best to scare two fellow human beings into telling him everything he wanted to know, with two fifteen-year-old teenagers looking on.

He’d fallen directly back into the worst of his old bad habits from his interdimensional travelling years, without a second thought.

And it had felt good. Normal, almost. ...No, not _almost_ \-- there had been no ‘almost’ about it.

He slowly felt the smile slip off of his face.

Bill -- Bill Cipher -- the _demonic triangle_ , had on occasion popped up in his head from time to time on his ‘adventures’ -- truly, his quest for vengeance. Even after he’d finally gotten that metal plate surgically installed, Bill had still violated his dreams now and then. Ford had always gotten angry all over again when he’d realized that Bill just _would not leave him alone_ , and even more so when Bill always and consistently acted like he’d thought Ford was out on some-- some _interdimensional jaunt_ just for _kicks_ , that he’d be back in the Nightmare Realm soon. That they were, again and still, _friends_.

He remembered how, once Bill had forced his way into this dimension, the dream demon had casually ignored Ford’s murder attempt as if it were a joke, of no consequence, once he had realized that it had been _him_ who had made the attempt. He remembered how Bill had picked him right up and promptly and happily introduced him to his ‘gang of interdimensional criminals and nightmares’, his ‘friends’, and told him he’d ‘fit right in’.

He’d always thought that Bill had been making fun of him, that he’d not been serious in the slightest in what he’d said he’d (again and still) been offering: a place at his side. He’d thought that Bill had been referring only to his freakish _hands_ as what would potentially make him ‘fit in’ with the rest of them. ...But now? Now he wasn’t so sure anymore, and it made him feel slightly sick.

He’d thought for years that Bill Cipher had brought out the worst in him, but he’d always been thinking of his mistake of trusting Bill in the first place and building the portal, whenever the thought had crossed his mind. But now...

...was it possible that this was true of _every_ Bill Cipher in the multiverse that he met, demonic triangle or no? That every Bill Cipher brought out the worst in him?

And if it wasn’t… then what did that say about _him?_

...No, no, that logic was unsound. For every individual with the name of ‘Bill Cipher’ in existence that might bring out the worst in him, there was likely one that would bring out the best, or who would bring out nothing at all. He reminded himself that he was living in a reality of infinite dimensions; anything and everything was possible, which meant he was likely overthinking this. --He was dealing with a Bill Cipher problem with these cultists, and so he’d dealt with it in a way that he’d reserved for all of Bill Cipher’s henchmen and companions in the past, that was all. He’d just have to be doubly-careful not to fall into old bad habits again, in the future, now that he’d realized how easily he’d slipped.

“Ford?” he heard his brother say. “You wanna run that by me again? They’re _what?_ ”

Ford shook himself, and brought himself back to the present.

“They’re from another, different Gravity Falls,” Ford told him.

Stanley frowned at him. “How did they get here?” he asked. “I thought you said that we didn’t get natural portals or any of that junk here.”

“We don’t,” Ford affirmed. “But apparently people -- human beings -- can be summoned via summoning circles, under certain conditions.”

Stanley’s eyebrows shot up.

“Do you know how much money--?” Stanley began, with an excited gleam of greed in his eyes, then stopped when Ford burst out laughing. “What?”

“You-- sound just like _Bill_ ,” Ford told him with a smile. “Ah, the teenaged one, I mean. Inside,” he amended, when he realized that he should probably qualify that, post-haste.

“...Right,” said Stanley. He paused. “Maybe we should just start calling the other one Cipher?”

Ford shook his head ruefully. “Apparently their… chosen last name is Cipher, as well.”

“Yeesh,” said Stanley. “Uh, okay. ‘The dumb triangle’?” Stanley asked, rolling with it.

Ford smiled.

“That will work,” Ford agreed.

\---


End file.
